DATE: March 17, 2013
SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 56: 1-13; John 12:20-26
by
William Salmond
When you think about it we are all bombarded by thousands of stimuli each day especially in the form of ads. The computer, TV, radio and print media with newspapers and magazines. The message is pretty consistent. “It’s all about you.” A healthier, more beautiful, happier, slimmer, you. Even a frozen yogurt promises much. A mini pinkberry promises “a mini treat- maximum happiness.”
The gospel of Jesus says the opposite… It’s not about you at all. As we shall see.
Jesus is in Jerusalem for Passover. There are crowds and even tourists from Greece. The Greeks would like to meet Jesus and they ask Philip to arrange it. He asks Andrews who brings them to Jesus. He is speaking to his disciples and the crowd.
“Truly, truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Polun karpon. Much fruit.
Well this seems obvious. Any good farmer or gardener will tell you it’s true. No planting, no fruit and harvest. Any poor farmer will tell you that after harvest you must preserve some seed corn for the next planting. In Africa this is kept in thatched round granaries on wooden stilts to keep out rats and mice and snakes. If you happen to have some used engine oil handy it makes sense to paint the stilts with it to stop ants from eating the supports Any poor farmer will tell you that if the family is so hungry that they eat the seed corn (and it happens!) then there will be a disastrous famine.
So the disciples and the crowds and the Greek tourists would have understood — or would they?! At one level maybe but not at other levels.
As we move through lent (that funny old English word referring to the lengthening days of spring) we get closer to the cross. In our passage Jesus is very near to arrest, torture and execution. Even the disciples don’t want to understand the necessity for Jesus’ death. They have been on a roller coaster for 3 years of ministry. Going to a healing, taking part in a healing, or coming from a healing. The Kingdom of God is so close and breaking in to people’s lives. When the 70 were sent out on mission they came back jubilant. “Even the demons obeyed us” they said. Jesus laughs and points skyward. “I saw Satan falling like lightning” he tells them. But they find it hard to understand that the final breakthrough of God into his world will only take place on the cross. You see Jesus, the Bread of Life, is saying that he is that grain of wheat. The Gospel writers tell us that at the moment of Jesus’ death the curtain in the Temple is torn in two. The curtain separating the most Holy of Holies from the people. Only the priest could enter and even then only at certain special times. At the moment of Jesus’ death God breaks in on his people your life and mine once and for all. So we can no longer talk of sacred and secular, holy and profane. The whole earth cries glory – the whole blessed thing. As always Wesley says it best.
“Emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race,
Amazing grace and can it be that Thou my God shoulds’t die for me.”
One of the more difficult parts of my work in Uganda was attending funerals of children who died as a result of HIV/AIDS complications. We wondered why? Did they stop taking their medication because of other children laughing at them at school? Or did their caregiver granny not have cash to go to hospital to replenish the antiretroviral drugs? After the funeral of one teenage girl Margaret in a very lovely setting between tea and sugar estates we reflected on her death during Ariel Children’s Camp which last a week and gives us all time to think, and pray and play. One of the older children Josephone led our mediation in the morning. She asked who had attended Margaret’s funeral and some hands went up. Did you week? Same hands went up including mine. She told us about Psalm 56 that God takes all our tears and puts them in his bottle. He cares about each of them and cares for them. Then she said that although at times the world seems to against us since we face many problems we must remember verse 9 in the same Psalm. “This I know that God is for me.” God is an FM God. We then planted a tree to remember Margaret and other children who had died.
This grain of wheat is also referring to your life and mine. The life of Discipleship. Unless we die to self then we will not be fruitful.
In 1933 Adolph Hitler appointed a Reich Bishop in the Lutheran Church – Ludwig Muller. His job was to unite the Protestant churches under the Nazi regime. In that moment the church became implicated in the future terror of Nazism. Some Christians stood against it and formed what was called the Confessing Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of them. As a result he was arrested and put to death by firing squad just days before the war ended. He wrote several books the most famous being “The Cost of Discipleship.” In it he says ‘When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die. When Christ calls a woman he bids her come and die.”
Unless a grain of seed falls into the ground and dies…
This morning God is calling each of you and me to discipleship. A renewed commitment, a closer walk. Do something costly because God’s grace is costly. Do something lovely because God’s grace is lovely. Do something extraordinary because God’s grace is extraordinary.
The story of each of our lives is like a snowflake or a fingerprint. Very unique. Each one of us is so different and complex and unique. We often have no idea what will happen next to us.
Here’s the strange story of how the Nobel Peace Prize came about. Alfred Nobel had made his fortune from dynamite and funding new ways to maim and kill. He had a brother called Ludwig Nobel who made is fortune from oil mainly in Baku in Russia. The European newspapers often confused the two of them. Ludwig Nobel went on vacation to the Mediterranean and died of a heart attack. Several European newspapers wrote the obituary for Alfred and not Ludwig.
The headline read “Dynamite King dies!”
Merchant of death who made his fortune finding new ways to maim and kill has died.”
Well Alfred Nobel was appalled. After attending his brother’s funeral he called his lawyers and tore up his will. He then wrote a new will bequeathing his fortune to a prize to honor all that was best and decent and good and lovely in human endeavor. Nobel Prize.
Jesus calls each of us to consider our lives, consider our direction, consider a closer walk, consider even a radical change. And on this way of the cross he promises peace, and fulfillment and even “maximum happiness.”
Amen